Friday, November 18, 2016

Let’s Go Kill Somethin’

It’s the time of year when the hunters head to the woods, intent on killing somethin’. They wear bright orange, just so they don’t go killin’ each other. Seems like a good idea. And just so you know, this isn’t a diatribe against hunting, or, as some wrongly call it, harvesting. It would only be harvesting if they were hunting squash. But killing deer, that’s called hunting. And for a variety of good reasons, go for it.

Not everyone gets into the whole hunting thing. But there’s other killing that should be done. Now don’t mistake, I’m not at all talking about killing people. But we ought to be killers of ideas - bad ideas, that is. We talk and discuss and think, and then we conclude that there are just some ideas out there that should be put to rest. Yes, it might hurt someone’s feelings if we disagree with them. But they need to get over it. You’re not killing them. You’re killing their idea.

We need to teach ourselves, and we need to teach our children, to say ‘no’ to ourselves at the appropriate times. Every urge we feel is not to be obeyed. Some of those passions and desires need to have a stake put through them. Why? Because it has been proven over and over by one sad case after another that the indulgence in certain desires and passions is not freedom of expression, but rather submission to slavery. ‘Sins of the flesh’ (so-called in Bible) don’t prove that you are the master of your life. Rather, they will be the killer of your soul, and do damage to those around you as well. What is needed is a sharp spear in the hand of a zealous Phinehas to nail the sin to the ground and stop the plague in its tracks.

John Owen said, “Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.” It’s a daily battle, always in season, so that we might be free to live according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. This Spirit is available through faith in Christ, and nowhere else, and provides the only alternative to dying in our sins. This alternative to dying in our sins - Jesus thought it was worth dying for; and we should think it worth killing for.